CWG case: CIC issues show cause notice to CBI

The Central Information Commission has issued a show cause notice to the CBI over delayed response to an RTI application seeking details pertaining to Commonwealth Games related corruption cases.

The transparency panel has slammed the Central Public Information Officer of the Anti-Corruption Branch of the CBI for sitting over the RTI plea, which was moved to it by the Delhi Police, asking as to why penalty should not be imposed against him.

Exercising his Right to Information, Advocate Vivek Garg had sought details of action taken report on his complaints filed against Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit and other functionaries alleging their involvement in corruption in executing CWG related projects in the national capital.

While his first RTI application dated December 21, 2011 was addressed to the Delhi Police, the other plea dated May 30, 2012 was addressed to the CBI. In the first case, he did not receive any response from the CPIO in time and, therefore, complained to the CIC against him.

"Belatedly though, the CPIO had responded to him with the plea that the CBI was no longer obliged to disclose any information under RTI having been placed in the second schedule to the Right to Information (RTI) Act," the Commission observed.

In the second matter, the CPIO had responded within the stipulated time period and had denied disclosure of any information on similar ground.

"We have carefully gone through the records. The RTI application dated December 21, 2011 had been transferred by the Delhi Police to the ACB, CBI. The CPIO of this branch seems to have sat over the application for quite some time and transferred it to his counterpart in the Anti Corruption (AC) 1 branch belatedly," Central Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra said in his order.